Once homeless vets now have a place to call their own at the Sepulveda VA

After battling opposition for over a decade, a permanent supportive housing facility for formerly homeless, disabled and low-income military veterans opened at the Sepulveda VA Friday.

Two nonprofit organizations renovated 60-year-old buildings that had been abandoned since sustaining damage in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, and turned them into 147 fully-furnished studio apartments.

Mayor Eric Garcetti cut the ribbon at the main entrance to New Directions Sepulveda I and II.

“We’ve taken a building that was broken, like too many of our veterans themselves are, a place that we had given up on, as too often we give up on our veterans, and restored it to its full health,” he said.

The 400-square-foot units are designated for veterans who had lived on the streets and tried to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and other injuries by abusing drugs or alcohol, but have since embraced sobriety.

“This is a new beginning in my recovery,” said Byron Makaena, who fought in Vietnam.

“This is a starting point… to maybe getting back on my feet, going back to work, and enjoying life,” he said.

New Directions for Veterans, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive services to veterans, and A Community of Friends, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, transformed what used to be a psychiatric and a spinal cord rehabilitation facility at the VA’s Sepulveda Ambulatory Care Center.

“I still remember 18 months ago, when this place looked like a dump,” New Directions president Greg Scott said.

ACOF chief executive officer Dora Gallo clarified, “This is not a (homeless) shelter but a home where every formerly homeless veteran is provided with a lease, a key, and an opportunity to recover from the invisible wounds of war.”

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Veterans must meet income requirements to be given a unit. Only 30 percent of their income, not exceeding $435, would go towards rent. The rest would be subsidized through federal housing vouchers.

Over the last decade, several community organizations, neighborhood councils, and government officials opposed the project, including Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, because developers did not initially plan to offer the units exclusively to homeless veterans, and were also open to having tenants that were not yet clean or sober.

Sherman also objected to the lack of competitive bidding for the project, as well as its cost — by some estimates $48 million total or about an average of $320,000 per unit including costs of common areas.

“I wanted this to be for clean and sober veterans only, have adequate staffing, and competitive bidding,” Sherman said. “I got three out of four.”

He added future projects on the VA campus should focus on addressing the medical needs of veterans.

“This is a hospital/healthcare facility for veterans so we should focus on medical services first,” he added. “Housing homeless vets should be a secondary objective.”